


The Temple Hymns

by Arianne, patrexes



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alien Gender/Sexuality, All Archive Warnings Apply, Blood and Injury, Body Worship, Bondage, Gangbang, Identity Issues, Memory Loss, Mentor/Protégé, Multi, Necrophilia, Other, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Ritual Sex, Snuff, Unreliable Narrator, woundfucking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:01:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27159013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arianne/pseuds/Arianne, https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrexes/pseuds/patrexes
Summary: In the beginning and the end, He is shaped by others’ hands.
Relationships: Azem/Elidibus (Final Fantasy XIV), Elidibus (Final Fantasy XIV)/Original Character(s), Elidibus/Convocation of Fourteen, Elidibus/Lahabrea/Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch, Elidibus/Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch, Elidibus/Unukalhai (Final Fantasy XIV), Elidibus/Venat, Igeyorhm/Lahabrea (Final Fantasy XIV), Urianger Augurelt/Elidibus
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	The Temple Hymns

**Author's Note:**

> A belated Kinktober collection, each of the six chapters based on one day of prompts from [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26522713) list by DuelCast.
> 
> This fic would not exist without the poetry of En-hedu-ana (fl. 23rd c. BCE), whose praises of Inanna are sweet.

Igeyorhm’s voice carries in the Convocation hall, a pitch above the din of mourning Emet-Selch hears in the rest of the gathering assembly. “There can be no greater joy than to use our wisdom for the good of our people. No greater pride.” 

“Igeyorhm,” Lahabrea interjects, chord soured with the sharp, discordant note of dismay and desperation. Their words need not be spoken aloud at all, but Lahabrea and Igeyorhm have ever been expressive—it is likely they desire to hear one another’s voices while they still may. 

All too selfishly, Emet-Selch wishes they would not. 

He has heard this argument time and again of late, and for all Igeyorhm seems untroubled by their impending unmaking, it has never become any easier to hear. “Long have you spoken highly of my dedication and exuberance, Speaker. Doesn't our god have need of these qualities?” they go on; were Emet-Selch embodied, he expects he would flinch. “All of us have our place, and _yours_ , so rare and so terribly bright, my blue star in the dark of night, is to lead our beloved home to its salvation.” 

Elidibus, far too small in the entrance to the Convocation’s chamber with their teacher’s steady hand high on their back, listens along, their aether flickering with a blank sort of interest. Uncomprehending. For the first time, Emet-Selch finds he envies the child. 

As the argument has always ended, so too it ends now: with Lahabrea’s bitter acceptance of their lover’s choice, today taking the form of a hand reaching out to their half-finished creation. Glancing up uncertainly, Elidibus waits for their teacher’s nod of permission before taking it. 

“You do the Convocation a service,” Igeyorhm tells the former Emissary—and how strange still, the sight of them in black. 

They regard it as the dismissal it is. “You do us all a service,” they reply, and they are gone from the threshold even before Elidibus at Lahabrea’s side can turn back to bid them farewell. The child’s colorless soul gleams for a moment like electrum, shot through with distress Lahabrea is quick to roust. 

“Come now,” the Speaker beacons, and leads Elidibus by the hand to the gathered Convocation. Each of them has a role to play in this assembly, and the child’s is upon the altar which has taken the place of the seat of the Emissary, for after this there shall _be_ no Emissary of the Convocation. 

The chamber door is closed with a sound that has never felt more final—and Emet-Selch could not say if he hopes it is or is not, if the horror they have devised can succeed or if it would not be a kindness to them all should it fail. 

Arms folded into a display of reluctance, Emet-Selch takes his seat as on any other day. Mitron’s beside him lies empty: they stand assembled with half the Convocation’s number before the altar, prepared for their imminent sacrifice the way the child, so earnestly telling the Speaker they are honored with their role, cannot be—was in fact designed to be incapable of. Lahabrea averts their gaze as they set aside the Emissary’s mask; Emet-Selch wishes he could avert his own as the Speaker embraces Igeyorhm, too mired in his own guilt to look away from their final, brief kiss. 

To the mercy of all, Lahabrea does not delay to begin, and silence falls as ever for the words of the Speaker: “The time is come. We shall rewrite the laws of creation. And we shall save our star.” 

With that they begin to recite those agreed-upon words that Emet-Selch has declined time and again to read. Now he strives to hear them only for their shape and not their meanings, nor the way they unravel the very bonds of reality the Convocation has promised to preserve—a mere delay toward the inevitable, the last turns of a dying star. Nothing within creation may be greater than the sum of its parts, but quite readily in fear can they lessen themselves through attempts to do that which is impossible. As the aether from half of the Convocation—half of the world—flows into the singular point that was the child’s artificial soul, Emet-Selch can only chase away grief with regret: that he did not argue more fervently against this course of action when first Lahabrea had suggested it, or, failing that, insisted he must serve as one of the sacrificed himself. 

But the combined efforts of the Convocation revealed no other way, and the Architect had been deemed as essential to remain as its Speaker. Thus they commit murder they call _salvation_ —the only salvation they shall deliver will be that a mere half their number must live to endure the world’s end. 

Elidibus’ colorless soul is fast obscured by a yawning darkness at its core which consumes all the aether their ritual delivers unto it, silent but for a pitch unlike any Emet-Selch has known that is not the screams of the dying but of the living: of the sacrifice granted wholeness to a power even the most hopeful among them had thought a dream borne of desperation. 

The brightest-shining among those who remain, even Lahabrea is difficult to discern amid the encroaching darkness, a hue deeper than any void. But his revulsion beckons bright enough Emet-Selch for all his determination cannot ignore it, horror all-consuming as the spell they had wrought at the expense of all whom even Emet-Selch can now only recognize in brief glimpses, transmuted into mere facets upon the soul that was the child Elidibus. 

Once he has looked upon it, the abomination which would be the savior of their star has Emet-Selch in its thrall, unable to turn his gaze away. But such is not his right: as much responsible for Elidibus’ existence as Lahabrea and the child’s predecessor, he will not spare himself the sight of their unmaking. 

By design—his own design, for all he abhors it—what has been done cannot be undone, nor even so much as interrupted, and as Lahabrea stumbles away from the altar Emet-Selch rises that the child might not face their final moments alone. He crosses the chamber in strides, embodied without conscious intent in a form unlike any he has yet favored, and though they carry him swiftly to the altar what lies before him is no longer an amalgamation of souls but One, beautiful beyond all imagining. Its hue has no name and cannot, for none could capture it in its glory—yet nonetheless in unknown chords he calls it _Zodiark_ , and it is right. 

With the hand of the form now recognizable as His own does Emet-Selch reach out, and He permits the touch. Where the child Elidibus was incapable in its incompleteness to manifest itself lies Beauty itself, even the unnameable darkness a mere reflection: their god and His vessel, at once defining the order of creation and superseding it—darkness itself and yet brighter than the sum of the aether sacrificed to give Him life, terrible above all else and most assuredly their salvation. 

In perfect androgyny does their creation and their god lie, still upon the altar but for the slow heave of His chest, eyes open and shining like all those millions of souls given up in willing sacrifice. Emet-Selch, believer and Architect both, is honored to be the first to offer his orisions. Elidibus gasps at Emet-Selch’s touch, soft through parted lips, and neither does He turn into the touch nor away as the Architect’s hand trails across His bare skin: the child having too little of a soul to take more than the shadow of a form, He in all His flawless darkness, everything and more, remains innocent of all things, even the shape of His own body and the ways in which it can be used. And so He accepts the worshipful touch without a shiver, only breathing as Emet-Selch commits His form to memory beneath searching fingertips: the fair features of His unmasked face, the line of His throat and the valley His gasps make of the space below the jut of His ribs, the slim, delicate handful that is His soft cock. Emet-Selch’s own grows hard not for any attention it is given but in the image of what arousal he works out of his newborn god, Elidibus’ moan quiet even in the hush as He begins to fill out heavy in Emet-Selch’s palm. 

“My beloved brother,” Emet-Selch prays, voiced in imitation of Elidibus’ broken gasp as he presses open the god’s still thighs, taking himself in hand. Ever whole in His beauty, behind the root of His cock lie the soft lips of a cunt, their flush a mirror of His mouth, coming apart for the spread of His legs and pulling tight again for the brush of Emet-Selch’s cock. “Come, let me rejoice in you,” he bids Him, and the stirring of his heart—his own desire that in the image of his god—is self-evident, and it is right. Emet-Selch parts with his fingers the lips of Elidibus’ cunt: sure as the course of the stars in their orbits, the resistance his cock meets when he drives it inside must be a reflection of Emet-Selch’s first, heretical misgivings. Yet faced with the fullness of His perfection, Emet-Selch cannot imagine another course than that which he now takes, to pour out oblations into the pliant vessel that is His Emissary, His very embodiment coming apart to receive of His own. 

On Elidibus’ eyelashes, tears shimmer but do not fall, and He clings to Emet-Selch by the tightness of His cunt to the exclusion of all else, His body limp beneath the weight of devotion. From His mouth spill only soft, whining exhales; Emet-Selch sets their rhythm with his thrusts, each easier than the last as Elidibus accepts His servant unto Him, fucked open when He is not full and no longer so dry that to worship Him is a thing Emet-Selch must endure. The form which so nearly reflects his god—only _nearly_ for Emet-Selch is desirous of seed to offer as an oblation, and so takes not the dual-sexed form but only one—leads even the familiar to feel new, sensitive as any untouched thing. As though He were not the master but the thrall the Emissary’s lip trembles, and Emet-Selch is moved to further supplication, saying, “Brother, let me kiss you.”

Soft-lipped Elidibus yields to the hand which tilts His chin up, and to the thumb that prises a mouth half-open to part further. Emet-Selch can feel His breaths quicken for the press of his lips, eyelids fluttering against his cheekbone even as Elidibus’ tongue lies still in His mouth; with reverence does Emet-Selch behold the honor which He sees fit to grant him—he whose guidance may lead His Emissary to the myriad pleasures of the flesh. Even in His inexperience do His preferences become clear: for fullness in His cunt did His thighs tense and His cock twitch caught between their bodies, but for a clever tongue does His chin tip up of His own accord to allow a deeper kiss, the first voluntary action of His vessel. Pride in their creation burns bright in Emet-Selch’s heart.

Emet-Selch takes His hand—of a size, when His teacher’s had been enough to cover the whole of His back—and places it upon his own shoulder; when Elidibus does not or cannot curl His own fingers Emet-Selch covers His hand to perform the motion himself. He waits, feeling the twitches of the small muscles which control digits—and at last trial and error leads Him to dig His fingers into Emet-Selch’s shoulder. It is easier, then, when Emet-Selch offers his forearm so His other hand might clutch at it, and Emet-Selch does not hide the proud turn of his embodiment’s lips from their kiss. It is not all which can be deepened if only Elidibus learns to hold tight, and the body which Emet-Selch has taken nearly in His own image is His for the purpose. 

He releases Elidibus’ thigh where he had held it up in order to take Him; left unsupported, it falls limp and turned out at the knee, irrelevant to the adjustments of their bodies Emet-Selch seeks. Though surely within His capability, he will not entreat the Emissary to perform the complex action of rocking into his thrusts, let alone learn it—unthinkable, when such an action is merely a matter of His servant placing a splayed hand across the small of His back to facilitate the movement himself. 

The first fully-seated thrust tears from Elidibus’ throat a sound Emet-Selch cannot begin to describe, wholly unlike the flat note which so often of late has joined the chords of discourse in Amaurot and yet immediately recognizable as the selfsame desperation from which He was born. Emet-Selch wishes in his own desperation to commit the frequency to memory, so resonant through their kiss he need break it for fear of becoming careless or impatient in an act of worship. He takes in deliberate breaths, focusing on the expansion of his lungs, while Elidibus’ own come erratic as though He believes this to be His last chance at drawing air—and still His mouth lies open, available, _needy_ to be kissed, this seemingly favored show of affection.

Emet-Selch drinks in the Emissary beneath him, perfectly harmonious in all which should by rights be diametrically opposed: bright-eyed darkness forged from blinding life, the purest aether and possessed of an embodied vessel, a higher being yet borne of a creature Emet-Selch once pitied for the mockery it made of sentience. Dual in even the most inconsequential aspects, He clutches His supplicant close even as He lies inert beneath him, and _needs_ even as His innocence forbids Him the knowledge _what for_ ; enthralled, Emet-Selch watches His face as He suffers his worship, the tears which have shone in dark lashes falling at last in gleaming tracks made haphazard in His quest for the succor of another kiss.

But to indulge Him would to be to tear his eyes away from that most beautiful thing in all creation, the sum of unquantifiable sacrifice and worthy of it twice-over and still more. In His Emissary’s eyes is desperate confusion and freely shed tears as, open-mouthed, He can but receive of his offering, body held close to His Architect’s. Zodiark’s wonder is an assault on every sense, painful in His magnitude: to worship Him it is right to hear Him cry out with newborn lungs, to feel His fingernails dig bruises into tender flesh, to know the shade of His aether more intimately than one’s own, and it is right to look upon Him in all His greatness, and as Emet-Selch embodies a reflection of Him so too does He embody a reflection of Emet-Selch, overwhelmed in the face of Beauty. Dark lips are now also swollen, warm beneath Emet-Selch’s fingertips and his own lips, granting the Emissary the kisses He so desires; so lost is he in their god’s splendor, Emet-Selch is heedless of another’s approach until their—no, now it is _his_ , for they are all reflections of Zodiark—hand knocks against his own.

Altima sounds both new and familiar, the soft chords in harmony with the same voice which has carried the Emissary’s cries. “The power I wield begins to feel terrible…” he murmurs, “but this is right. It is right.” Looking upon Elidibus, there can be no question.

“It is right,” Emet-Selch echoes, though for an instant he feels anything but: to step aside for Altima to take up his place, the spend on the lips of the Emissary’s cunt now all that remains of Emet-Selch inside Him.

But He belongs to no one of them, rather they belong to Him: it is right that the others may worship as he has. Nor can he deny Him touch when He seeks it, reaching out not for Altima where he presses kisses to His sternum but for Emet-Selch in his familiarity as he comes to stand behind the altar where scant minutes and a seeming eternity ago Lahabrea had stood.

As though Elidibus still thinks Himself small, both His hands clutch one of Emet-Selch’s forearms; in their nearly identical forms, His grip nearly spans its whole length, strong enough to bruise, and bruise him He does when Altima is joined by Pashtarot. Emet-Selch caresses Elidibus’ face, fingertips lingering over His fair features and scrubbing away the stain of tears on His cheeks.

Emet-Selch knows from the scores Elidibus digs into his forearm the moment one of their number—which, he cannot guess, and finds himself unwilling to look away from the Emissary’s face to learn—has His well-used cunt, and knows the pace that is set by His gasping breaths. Emet-Selch presses two fingers past His parted lips to fill His mouth, and murmurs into His ear soft-voiced praises as Elidibus learns through curiosity that He too can move His tongue, and that He can suck them if only He brings Himself to close His lips about them.

And so do the rest make their offerings, and fall away, drained of no small amount of living aether—the rest, save one. Emet-Selch casts his gaze upon Lahabrea where he stands far from the altar as the chamber’s dimensions allow, still clad in aether and robes alone. “Come, brother,” he bids. “Partake of our salvation,” and upon the altar Elidibus shudders.

When first Emet-Selch had beheld Lahabrea’s most audacious creation—the child’s soul, devoid of personality and color—he found it as horrifying as it was impressive; never had he thought this gambit of theirs would be a success, that anything _more_ could be made of the thing they all called Elidibus. Never has Emet-Selch been so glad to admit his cynicism led him astray. To look upon what Elidibus has become—what they have made of Him—is to feel pride in accomplishing the impossible, and none should feel that pride more strongly than he to whom more of their god’s existence is owed than any other. It is Lahabrea whose ingenuity has enabled their star’s deliverance, and it is Lahabrea for whom Emet-Selch gathers up into his arms the shivering child out of which they have forged their god.

At long last, the Speaker sheds his robe and mask, donning a reflection of Zodiark’s vessel as he takes up his place between the Emissary’s thighs, lying apart even before Emet-Selch takes hold of one underneath His knee, raising it bent and held close to His chest to invite His taking.

Lahabrea is not so particular as the Architect, and so the form he takes is truly a reflection, not tailored to suit his whims. Ignoring for now his own cunt, for He is no longer hard enough to fill it, he brings himself to hardness in some few rough strokes of his hand; the first tap of his cockhead against the worn, soft lips of Elidibus’ cunt—so worn now that Lahabrea needn’t so much as hold them open as Emet-Selch had, as the very first to so exalt Him—causes Him to cry out. Emet-Selch soothes Him with a low sound, a subverbal _hush_ , and offers again his fingers, having slipped from Elidibus’ mouth.

Though Emet-Selch cannot be sure of his perception, Lahabrea’s gaze falls only between Elidibus’ thighs. He inquires with neither of them before pushing inward, giving Him in a single press what had taken Emet-Selch so many more; though it does not silence His cry, glad is he that the Emissary has fingers between His teeth for how He tenses, though even in having Lahabrea’s full length He is made to take in no more than He yet has several times over. Emet-Selch lets his other hand come to curl loosely around Elidibus’ cock, barely hard for all He has endured. As they seek to pour out oblations into the empty vessel that is His Emissary, His servants seek, instinctive, to be filled by Him as if to replace that aether they expend in their worship with His own, a spear of brightest darkness upon which they are unmade and remade in the image of Beauty: so have they partaken of Him and compelled Him to partake of them in turn. Now for Emet-Selch He cries out as He had for all those before him, moaning around the press of his fingers past His lips.

“Hush now,” Emet-Selch bids Him, his touch gentle and the pace his hand sets forgiving. “We shan’t give You anything You cannot bear.” For how could they, made in the image of Him?

Lahabrea stands tall between the slender thighs of He who is both his god and his creation: he beholds what twice over has been built by his hand, and by his hand so too shall now be taken apart, gasping broken and overwhelmed as do His supplicants who have in the worship of Him spent themselves of aether and desire. Fingers which wove the threads of His soul leave bruises upon the embodiment that is His own, marks the same shade as His lips quick to bloom on the ridges of His hipbones, and the Speaker’s nails drag welts down His thighs. But veneration takes many forms, and fury cannot exist where there is no love for a thing; Lahabrea’s has ever burned with a passion at first glance indistinguishable from rage.

Elidibus weeps in Emet-Selch’s arms, utterly shameless in His perfect ruination, and Emet-Selch is moved to tears himself at the sight; they fall freely down his cheeks as he brushes the Emissary’s hair aside to press into the line of His shoulder more of the kisses He so longs for.

Neither possessing control of His body nor needing it, still some unknowable impulse pulls Elidibus to reach out to His creator—but weak, for their own aether is a poor substitute, and His fingertips only just brush Lahabrea’s chest over his heart.

“We are but sparrows, and you are a falcon,” answers Lahabrea, offering his first praises through his shudders. “We are sparrows, an entourage of common songbirds to accompany you with praises traversing the threshold of the rift which lies in the spaces between atoms.” And he sounds so assured of these words, as if to Speak them is to make them reality—and no longer can Emet-Selch hold any doubt in his heart of their truth.

If he had not known that the pain he felt for the drag of the dry walls of Elidibus’ cunt on his cock was the product of his own fallibility, to watch Him take Lahabrea would assure him of it. Elidibus no longer grasps for Emet-Selch: His arms draped at His sides upon the altar, empty-handed, He is rocked in Emet-Selch’s arms entirely passive, his presence at His back all that may brace Him to the force of Lahabrea’s thrusts. Unable or unwilling to meet them, the Emissary’s cunt offers none of the resistance through which Emet-Selch needed earn His blessing; Lahabrea fucks Him deep, and to take Him yet deeper drags the Emissary onto his cock with a bruising grip upon His shaking thighs. Head in Emet-Selch’s lap, His hair fans out, a wild mess beneath Him, plastered with sweat to Emet-Selch’s bare skin and to His own cheek, strands falling in His open mouth. Emet-Selch reaches between His legs and gathers from the lips of His cunt wetness neither His cock nor dry mouth can offer, smearing it on his fingers so the pump of his hand might be a respite, and this touch is allowed him; His cunt lies open and receptive, wet as only His brethren’s spent offerings have made Him.

“You are a falcon who preys upon gods,” says the Speaker, the complicated expression he has worn—mournful, furious, longing—smoothing out to simple agapē. The Emissary beneath him lies in all but repose, exhausted even of His tears; when Emet-Selch’s hand at last wrings a dry release from His flushed cock, He has for the occasion not the wet sobs which had painted His belly with the seed of creation, spilling back onto His skin from the thighs of those who had been graced to ride Him, but only a ragged exhale. “O my brother, my brother…” Lahabrea murmurs, looking upon Him in all His resplendence, and his is a single voice which wants for a harmony to be lost amidst—a solitary, yearning note. “You shall die but Your name shall never be forgotten. Your name shall exist in songs and it shall make the songs sweet,” and Emet-Selch can merely echo such praise until at last the Emissary finds His true voice, and as three the chord they strike may ring hope for the star which hears it.


End file.
